Happy.

I don’t know how long this has been going on, or when it will stop, but I have really noticed lately that I am unequivocally happy. This keeps coming to my attention when I’m around strangers, especially staff in shops: I’ll be ordering a milkshake, and I’ll have the biggest smile on my face, and I’ll say something to the shop-person and feel like I really care about them and their day and their world… and if anything goes wrong, it washes off straight away.

What are the contributing ingredients to this happiness? I don’t know! I don’t even feel like everything is how I want it to be… I still long for work that I can really get my teeth into; I long for colleagues who I love working with, and a workspace that I adore, and to feel like I’m doing something worthwhile. (Not that being a parent isn’t worthwhile. But. A different kind!) And our house is still a complete doer upper-er mess. Oh well, life is good. This simple life, this quiet life.

Today, for example, James got up with Kit and I slept until 8:30am, then my parents minded Kit while I went to a 1-hour yoga class, then we all had lunch together. Then during Kit’s afternoon nap, I read some of Better Than Before (a Christmas gift), and did 20 minutes of meditation. Then we came home to “papa,” had dinner, went for a walk to the park, came home and all read baby books and sang together… Admittedly, I didn’t get any chores/errands/tasks done today, but that’s okay. I’m making good progress on my projects.

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It’s amazing to think that at this time a year ago, I was often stressed and sometimes unhappy. By 28 January 2015, our kid was almost 12 weeks old, and it had only been 4 weeks since I’d gotten out of the new-mum-super-hard-phase. I remember washing wash my face at night, then rubbing on face oil, and really taking the time to massage my cheeks and temples and jawline, where I could feel the stress in my face. And one month from then, 28 February 2015, we had our big car crash, and I entered a whole new world of hurt.

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In other news!, I really wanted to link to a YouTube video where the philosopher Alan Watts was talking about how we shouldn’t/can’t think of our minds as being separate from our bodies, but I can’t find the video!

In it, Alan Watts said: So many of us think of our minds as being the little driver in the little cab of a much larger truck, controlling the truck, and that theoretically we feel like we could remove the little driver and place them in another truck, and they could drive that truck – but he declares no!, this is not the case – we are an ecosystem; that our bodies are us, and that if we changed bodies, we wouldn’t be us. And that we have to stop thinking of our bodies as a vessel that isn’t integral to us, and we must start thinking of ourselves as one ecosystem, one being, one us.

Does that make sense? I saw the video ages ago, and every now and then, I think about this concept again, and try to think about my body and mind being inseparable, as one ecosystem. I feel like I can’t quite shift my thinking from the “little driver” viewpoint, and I’d like to be able to.

Fox Woods (@msfoxwoods)
Hello. Yes, my name is Fox. I love making things (clubs, workshops, events, communities, stories, products, videos, music). I have two (2) small kids and one (1) small dog. I made the kids, but not the dog. That would be weird. ⇢ more